Implementing Digital Planning in London — How We’ll Do It
By Molly Strauss, Principal Policy and Programme Officer and Peter Kemp, the GLA Planning Change Manager at the GLA.
In our last post, we explained our vision to transform how local authorities share data on planning applications with London City Hall:
Our ambition is to create a ‘live hub’ of planning and development information, accessible to all Londoners by reforming the information we collect and the way we collect it.
We will request the data we need for monitoring up front, on the initial planning application. This data will pass seamlessly into authorities’ improved back-office systems, where planners will verify it, and then automatically out of those systems to City Hall and onto a public website.
We identified this vision in response to research showing the difficulties Local Planning Authorities face in meeting our monitoring needs, and as a result, challenges around data accuracy and completeness.
On 26 October, we brought together representatives from London’s 35 Local Planning Authorities, along with back-office system providers and application submission portals, to launch the project in City Hall’s Chamber. There we discussed the changes needed from all parties involved in order to reach our ambitious goal by February 2020.
First, we’ll need to change the information needed to submit a planning application in London. Those who manage application submission portals will add new fields to the application online form. These new fields will capture the data required for monitoring in a machine-readable form. These fields will ask for information already provided by applicants in supporting documents.
By entering the information in a designated field rather than burying it in a text description or a PDF, that piece of data can travel automatically into back office systems and to City Hall. We are ensuring that these changes are made to each of the application submission portals that serve London.
For those new fields to be ‘required’ of applicants, London’s 35 Local Planning Authorities will need to update their local validation lists to include the new fields. Local Planning Authorities will put the proposed set of fields out for consultation, with help from City Hall, and then formally adopt the new complete list.
In order for the new pieces of data to travel from the application portal into Local Planning Authority systems, back-office providers will have to adjust their software to include the new fields as well. That way, when an applicant enters a development’s floor area into the Floor Area field on a planning application, there will be room in the receiving borough’s back-office system to hold that specific piece of data. City Hall is working with back-office providers to ensure these changes are made.
Likewise, all Local Planning Authorities will need to be at the same level of back-office sophistication for automation to work. For example, all Local Planning Authorities must have connectors to an application submission portal that allows them to receive planning applications electronically. City Hall is working with Local Planning Authorities and providing resource to ensure those who are a bit behind in this respect are able to catch up.
Next, LPAs will need to set up automatic data extracts from their back-office system, so that City Hall can automatically pick up data from each planning authority daily. City Hall will provide support to assist in setting up these extracts.
At City Hall, we have two big pieces of work to complete. First, we’ll need to upgrade our database to receive automatic data extracts from boroughs. This may involve further development of the London Development Database, or we may look to the private sector to provide a database solution.
Secondly, we’ll need to design a new public hub to hold this planning application data in a format accessible to Londoners. Guided by the principles in the Local Digital Declaration, we will do user research to determine the best tools for Londoners to understand this newly accessible data.
Each of the above tasks will be pursued in parallel, allowing us to meet our ambitious February 2020 delivery target.
This is a truly collaborative project across London’s planning authorities, IT providers and the GLA, with expertise and support provided by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Future Cities Catapult. We are also exploring partnerships with authorities outside of London, so that other cities and counties can also benefit from the solutions we create.
Currently, we are preparing for these big changes to take place by making sure we have accurate information from each borough on their IT estate and the leadership responsible for different aspects of this work. We are also finalising our draft list of new fields to add to the planning application form for London, which we will be consulting on with all 35 planning authorities for comment shortly.
To learn more about the wide-ranging benefits we believe this project can achieve, read our last post.
